"Nearest thing to Mars on earth," scientists call
Antarctica's dry valleys. Here they hope to learn
what kinds of life might exist in the harsh world of
the red planet. Stark Victoria Valley dwarfs explorers'
tents by a frozen lake. Thawing and freezing cracks
the ground into a giant flagstone pattern. Geologists
think barricading mountains and dry winds keep
such valleys free of mantling ice and snow.
Fossilized footprints 400 million years old crisscross
a sandstone slab found by South African Professor
T. W . Gevers, left, and Arthur Twomey of the Uni
versity of Wisconsin. The tracks were left by a pair
of ten-inch-long trilobites, relatives of today's crab.
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